Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land

One of the secrets of Roku's success has been its expansion beyond its roots as a set top box maker (a term the company tries to avoid). To do this, Roku CEO Anthony Wood built a loyal customer following by moving the company away from only selling its own boxes, instead now licensing its software to TV makers, so they can ship screens with the company's streaming TV platform built-in. This is a much higher margin business than selling streaming hardware, and almost one-third of so-called smart TVs sold last year included Roku's software.

Roku has also developed and licensed streaming programming of its own, backed by advertising. The Roku Channel, available on all its platforms, was 2019's most popular ad-backed streaming channel, ahead of rivals Pluto TV and Crackle, according to market research firm Parks Associates. That's another business that yields higher margins than producing set top boxes.

From the article "Wall Street isn’t sure Roku can lead cord cutters to the promised land" by Aaron Pressman.

Previously In The News

OTT Churn Edges Up In US

About 20% of US broadband homes had cancelled at least one OTT service in the last 12 months at the end of 2015, according to data from Parks Associates. Netflix has the lowest churn among US OTT s...

19% Of US Broadband Households Cancelled An OTT Video Service In 12 Months

Parks Associates has announced that the churn rate for OTT video services is 19% of US broadband households, indicating roughly one in five households have cancelled an OTT service in the past 12 mont...

Smart home devices are 'valuable' to 75% of those who use them

As it turns out, smart home owners are really satisfied customers. Give them a chance to buy a connected device, like a smart thermostat, and nearly 75 percent of them are really happy with what they...

Pay TV Soars In Spanish-Language Homes

Among bilingual Spanish-language households with broadband internet, 89 percent subscribe to a pay-TV service, according to a new report from Parks Associates. That compares to 84 percent of all U.S....